Brutally cold weather reaching deep into lower United States
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Arctic weather brought more misery to much of the U.S. on Saturday.
This was especially true for people unaccustomed to bitter cold in places like Memphis, where residents were urged to boil water, and some had none at all, after freezing temperatures broke water mains across the city. Temperatures weren’t expected to rise until after the weekend.
The cold followed a series of storms over the last week that are blamed for at least 61 deaths around the country, many involving hypothermia or road accidents.
At the Four Way Grill in Memphis, owner Patrice Bates Thompson said water problems have closed the soul-food kitchen for days.
“This is our staple, and this is what basically drives the force of my family financially,” Thompson told Fox-13 Memphis. “We depend on business, and we have been at home.”
So many pipes broke in Memphis that water pressure fell throughout the city. Concerned about possible contamination, Memphis Light, Gas & Water on Saturday urged its more than 400,000 customers to use bottled supplies or boil water for drinking while crews worked around the clock to make repairs.
“Our production and treatment of water is working well,” the utility said in an email. “We cannot give restoration estimates until all leaks are identified.”
The utility said more than 100 employees Saturday volunteered to identify breaks. They were asking residents to report leaks in streets, at homes and in unoccupied buildings.
Without water since Thursday morning, Pamela Wells was visited Saturday by a worker who asked whether there was a leak.
“My husband said, ‘How can we have a leak if we don’t have any water?’” she said.
When they noticed the pressure dropping, they filled a bathtub with water to flush toilets, Wells said. For everything else, they were using a dwindling supply of bottled water until their street became passable Saturday.
“It’s been a struggle,” she said, recalling how they lost water for a 10-day stretch in December 2022. “You don’t know how long it’ll be out.”
The Memphis City Council opened seven bottled-water distribution stations Saturday, one in each district. Two others were operating at fire stations. One center had 300 cars lined up when it opened Saturday, Shelby County Emergency Management Director Brenda Jones said.
Dangerous cold is continuing to affect much of the Rockies, Great Plains and Midwest, with wind chills below minus 30 degrees being recorded Tuesday.
“You have people with absolutely no water, people with low water pressure, and you have the ‘boil water’ advisory,” she said.
A huge swath of the U.S. was under a wind chill advisory, from Montana to central Florida. It was particularly harsh in the Midwest. The wind made it feel like 16 below zero Saturday in Iowa City, Iowa, and overnight wind chills hovered around zero in Oklahoma City, where David Overholser sought shelter at the nonprofit Homeless Alliance.
“Being 63 and from Florida originally, I don’t like cold. I can’t handle it,” Overholser told the Oklahoman. “It’s been very, very rough and painful, and I just, you know, try to hang on one day, one hour at a time. ... It’s definitely scary.”
Wind chills dipped to 20 below zero early Saturday in Vermont, where the Stowe Mountain Resort urged skiers to be cautious.
“Bust out all the stuff you need to hang on the mountain safely, take frequent warm up breaks inside, and keep a close eye on each other for signs of frostbite,” the resort’s website said.
Ravens fans unaccustomed to such cold in Baltimore bundled up for wind chills near zero for Saturday’s playoff, but it was business as usual in Buffalo, N.Y., where the Bills called for more shovelers to clear snow from the stands before Sunday’s big game. Highmark Stadium in nearby Orchard Park got smothered by 5 feet of lake-effect snow in five days.
Snow tapered off in other parts of the Northeast after blanketing a large area that included Washington and New York City. In New York, aid groups on Saturday distributed food and clothes to migrants who bundled up in thick coats to ward off the freezing temperatures.
More snow was coming to West Virginia, where the weather service said up to 4 inches could fall Saturday, along with winds gusting to 40 mph, driving wind chills as low as 20 below zero.
More lake-effect snow pounded northwestern Indiana on Friday into Saturday, creating near white-out conditions around Lake Michigan and making the busy highway corridor in and out of Chicago treacherous.
“We’re kind of taking a chance — rolling the dice,” Frank Finney told WBBM-TV. He and his family were navigating Interstate 94 in Indiana from Michigan City to La Porte.
Tennessee recorded 19 deaths. They included a 25-year-old man found dead on the floor of a mobile home in Lewisburg after a space heater overturned and turned off, said Bob Johnson, chief deputy for the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office. “There was ice on the walls in there,” he said.
On the West Coast, more freezing rain was forecast Saturday in the Columbia River Gorge, and the area was expected to remain near or below freezing through at least Sunday night. Trees and power lines already coated with ice could topple if they get more, the National Weather Service warned.
“Stay safe out there over the next several days as our region tries to thaw out,” the weather service said. “Chunks of falling ice will remain a hazard as well.”
Thousands have been without power since last weekend in parts of Oregon’s Willamette Valley because of storm damage. Despite work by repair crews, more than 63,000 customers were without electricity in the state as of Friday night, according to poweroutage.us.
The weather service predicted above-average temperatures across most of the country this week.
Meanwhile, not everyone was unhappy.
“It’s fun right now,” Michigan City resident Andrew Smith told WBBM-TV. “We haven’t had this much snow in a minute, and Christmas wasn’t snowy, so it’s fun to do this. I can play with the kids, make snowballs.”
AP journalists Jonathan Mattise and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville; Claire Rush in Portland; Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y.; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C.; and Colleen Long in Washington contributed.
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